OPPO A5s Unboxing and First Impressions

OPPO A5s is finally available in the Philippines. This is supposedly the update to last year’s OPPO A3s, which in my opinion, is good upgrade from last year’s version. In terms of how it looks, OPPO A5s bears similar traits from its predecessor. Volume rockers may be found on the left side, while the sleep/wake button may be found on the right side.

Now, let’s talk about its screen. It looks somewhat similar to A3s. OPPO A5s now has a new dewdrop notch design compared to OPPO A3s’ half-rectangular notch. It is in the new dewdrop notch that you will see its camera, plus a slightly hidden earpiece. Due to this change, OPPO A5s’ screen-to-body ratio slightly got bigger. Its screen size and resolution, however, stayed the same compared to A3s.

What we’ve got right here is the OPPO A5s in red color. I like its luscious design, which kind of makes it look premium. At first look, one would think that it costs more than PhP7,000. It is a smudge magnet though, and if you sweat so much, you might get annoyed with the smudges you will see in its laminated polycarbonate body. I’ve got no complaints though as OPPO was kind enough to include a screen protector, as you may have seen in the unboxing earlier.

According to some of our commenters, it is unacceptable to see a smartphone that still uses Micro USB in 2019. OPPO defies this by still using micro USB on OPPO A5s. I honestly exactly don’t know their reason for this but I guess it’s about cutting the cost of production as micro USB modules are cheaper than USB Type C.

Now let’s talk about its camera. You will be surprised that whatever camera set is in this camera is similar with what the OPPO A3s has, except for the brighter aperture setup of OPPO A5s’ camera. I am not sure about their move about this, but I think this is where to the old adage “If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it” comes into play. Perhaps what they are really banking on right now are the specific major improvements that A5s offers like:

Corning Gorilla Glass 3

Mediatek Helio P35 Octa-core processor

High RAM capacity at 3GB

Higher internal storage at 32GB

Availability of Face Unlock

I took some sample photos using OPPO A5s and the photos somehow looked the same compared to what we experienced with OPPO A3s before. Here are some sample photos.

The only major disappointment that I see on OPPO A5s is its slightly outdated OS, which is ColorOS 5.2.1. At the time of the production of this video, OPPO has not given us any information if they will bring ColorOS 6 to A5s anytime soon.

Catch our full review soon on Gadget Pilipinas!

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Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of GadgetPilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.